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Comment by yaitsyaboi | Hacker News Reader

That sounds like a very mid 20th century POV. Which I totally get for Buffett.

Most rankings of social mobility put the US outside the top 20. The highs are higher here, but the path to get there, especially from the bottom 10%, is more difficult than almost any country we consider a peer.

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I would be interested in how the US mobility fared if the metric was not %, put purchasing parity. I imagine it is better to go from the bottom 10% to 20% in the US than bottom 10 to top 10 in many counties.

After all, an income of 15k (ppp) puts someone in the top 10% globally and 30k is the top 1%

I don't think that's accurate. Economic mobility in the US has been so high for so long, that it stands to reason that most families in the US have already achieved their potential.

What is probably a more telling indicator is the degree to which poor IMMIGRANTS are able to move up - an indicator that the US dominates.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/1/20942642/s...

I don't think that stands to reason at all. That sounds laughable, especially in the context of the heinous things American society did to purposefully black families from "achieving their potential". While immigrant families' ancestors were in their home countries accruing assets, educational opportunities, and (relatively more) equal access to what their country had to offer, black people here were held back from their white peers. Home equity, educational opportunities, freedom from police harassment, the ability to organize politically without facing literal terrorism.

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